Jade Bird w/ Flyte

She began writing her own songs at 12, the beginning of a phenomenal drive that’s taken her around the world in the past couple of years. School in Bridgend didn’t offer her the opportunity to follow that ambition. “Unless you're bilingual, in the arts, it's impossible to get anyone to care about you,” she explains. “It was like, well, I'm 16. I don't really wanna do a science A-level… and if you do a BTec in a normal college it's kinda hard to get a good knowledge of the subject. So London was the place.”

Looking around the arts schools on offer for 16-year-olds in the capital, Jade picked on the one that seemed the best: the ultra-competitive Brit school. On her second try, she got in. “People are like, oh, you went to get famous,” she says. “Not really... or if you do, you soon realise that if you don't work hard then that school does not get you favours.” Jade’s work ethic mean she was far from coasting – most nights during her A-level studies, she was out gigging around London.

Jade Bird is a perfectly constructed album of tight, hooky songs, from the bluesy garage rock of “Going Gone” and “Uh Huh” to the more reflective and melancholy “My Motto”, which stretches her remarkable voice, with its raw emotional and agile musicality, to the full. The track list was whittled down painstakingly in Rhinebeck from 200 songs written over the course of a year in which she’s toured furiously, testing every song out live. She was also longlisted in the BBC’s Sound of 2018, and performed the album’s lead single, the irresistibly soaring Lottery, not only on Jools Holland but on Tonight with Jimmy Fallon alongside the Roots. Y

You’ll see that Jade Bird has left herself no room for regret in 2019, with so much more to come.